Word: floods
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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...shops and banks shut down all over Madrid. Government offices closed, loosing a flood of loyal bureaucrats onto the streets. They joined blue-shirted youths carrying the black-and-red banners of the Falange, aging veterans proudly sporting their Spanish Civil War ribbons, and thousands of ordinary men and women. By high noon, an estimated 500,000 Madrileños had crowded into the broad Plaza de Oriente, which faces the imposing 18th century royal palace. For two hours, the mob waved banners-one read GOD SAVE US FROM WEAK GOVERNMENT-sang hymns, chanted Falangist slogans, and shot their right...
...Innocents is another such war-glory story. Charles Flood spent a year in Vietnam, flying around with American Army units and doing some occasional fighting, and now tells his story. But Flood's year in Vietnam was in 1967, when American troop levels were still increasing, which suggests how outdated this book is; and although the names in the book do coincide with Vietnamese geography, the war is barely recognizable in the story, which suggests how near-sighted Flood...
...Flood tells his story from the point of view of an observer watching the Americans in action. Considering the nature of this war, that is a rather curious perspective: Flood sees lots of napalm-he even flies on the fighter planes that drop it-but there is not one word about the burning flesh, the terror, and the grotesque horror of a napalm explosion. Oh no, Flood instead rhapsodizes about the sleek shiny pointed bomb casing the napalm is dropped in. A book about the Vietnam war might be expected to include a little discussion of the National Liberation Front...
...Innocents might have been harmless, though inane, war-time storytelling, except that Flood cannot resist editorializing. This is 1967, remember, and Flood's prescription for ending the war is to increase troop levels to two million American soldiers in Vietnam and thereby "pacify" the countryside. The only officer Flood meets who advocates American withdrawal is a Harvard graduate, as is Flood, so Flood takes a fraternal interest in showing the officer the flaws in his argument. Flood gets along better, however, with yet another Harvard officer, who explains that "the survival of our civilization is ultimately a function...
PERHAPS a novel should not be judged solely on the basis of an ideological critique, so it is worth noting that this book is dreadfully lacking in style, too. Flood apologizes halfway through the book: "How do you write a beautifully constructed book about a completely formless situation?" Flood never answers that question, which might be excused if it demonstrated a purpose in the novel-showing that the war was indeed formless-but Flood's picture of the war is so incomplete that any conclusion would be laughable...